


Stormy Weather

by earlgay_milktea



Category: High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (TV)
Genre: Bad Weather, Disney is a coward, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Romance, Seblos Origin Story, Sharing an umbrella, Storms, Strangers to Lovers, a bit of angst, i do all the work around here smh, i love my sons can you tell, soft content, tim won't give us the seblos origin story so i have to do it myself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:49:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22648186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgay_milktea/pseuds/earlgay_milktea
Summary: Carlos lets his hand trace all the way up to the front of Seb’s shirt, over his collar, to the warm, damp skin of his throat. He can feel Seb’s pulse under his fingers, thudding at a brisk allegro pace.“Can I kiss you?” he whispers.Seb—his gaze searing in its intensity, his heartbeat hammering faster and faster—nods.Alternatively: Seb and Carlos share an umbrella.
Relationships: Seb Matthew-Smith & Carlos Rodriguez, Seb Matthew-Smith/Carlos Rodriguez
Comments: 49
Kudos: 85





	Stormy Weather

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE READ FOR CONTEXT 
> 
> This story is set sometime before episode 5. I realised that Carlos and Seb would need to have some sort of bonding moment before they could become so close, and I went brainstorming (haha storming) and then I went into a haze and when I woke up, three days had passed and this was written.
> 
> It's the seblos origin story that we never got. It's also my first published fic. Please be kind to me.
> 
> @ tim fedora: you can't expect us to believe carlos would ask seb to homecoming in episode 5 despite them having no prior interaction. which means there must be an origin story WHERE IS THE ORIGIN STORY TIM

“Carlos, are you going to be fine on your own?”

There’s genuine concern in Ashlyn’s eyes, and Carlos, for a moment, is so taken aback he doesn’t respond. They’re loosely acquainted, like he is with the rest of the school, and she has no reason to look at him like he’s made of glass. 

“Obviously,” he says, more snappishly than necessary. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

The practice space is completely deserted except for them, and if Carlos strains his ears enough, he can hear the echoes of footsteps and raucous voices that had filled this area not ten minutes ago. They packed up fast. He doesn’t blame them, though. If the knife-sharp tension between Ricky and Nini isn’t enough, there is blatant antagonism in the way that Ricky and EJ circle each other like sharks, even though half the show hinges on them being _best friends._

God. Carlos does not know nor care about whatever heterosexual drama those three are caught in, but they’d better solve it before it ruins their—his—show. 

Some of his irritation must show, because Ashlyn raises her eyebrows and takes a step back. 

“Okay,” she says slowly. “The weather forecast said it’s going to storm in the evening.” The sky is cloud-white behind the windows, and she eyes it contemplatively. “You might want to wrap up before then.”

Carlos waves her off with a dismissive hand. “It’s just a few dance steps. I won’t be that long.” As he talks, he fiddles with his phone, typing up ‘status quo instrumental’ into the YouTube search bar. When he looks up, Ashlyn is _still there._

“Did you want something else?” He’s being as amiable as a cactus, which, on most days, he is. It’s good for fending off the homophobic residue of East High. It’s not very good for making friends. Carlos wishes he knew how to turn it off, sometimes. 

“I’ll see you next week,” Ashlyn says at last. Carlos doesn’t respond. He looks at his phone screen and doesn’t stop looking until her footsteps fade away. He taps ‘play’ and lets the peppy drumbeat drown out his self-pity. 

The music is too loud. It reverberates around the practice space, bouncing off the wooden floorboards and the mirrors. It fills the gaps that the cast had inhabited, trying to bring some semblance of human warmth in a room that, previously, had overflowed with it.

Carlos used to spend hours at end in this room, going over steps until his feet ached. He can remember it clearly: him, a starry-eyed freshman, throwing his heart and soul into his first production; putting too much effort behind the force of his high kicks, beaming with too much teeth, going to ridiculous lengths to please the teachers. He didn’t understand, back then. Boys like him were meant to stay in their own, quiet lanes. Boys like him: brown and openly gay and with a mouth too smart for their own good, were meant to stay in the background. They weren’t meant for centre stage, they weren’t supposed to be the teacher’s pet, and they certainly weren’t meant to be choreographing entire musicals. 

And yet. Here he is. 

It feels like a fever dream, sometimes. The enthusiasm of this cast. The desire reflected within _everyone_ to make this show come alive. Reality layered with a technicolour lens, surreal and vibrant, like he could blink too hard and the world would revert back to its slightly grey self. 

The music blares, and Carlos loses himself in it. 

* * *

Seb’s shoes are squeaking with every step he takes. This is not a good thing. This is a very inconvenient thing. He's wearing a new pair of Converse shoes, and his sisters had specifically bought the ones with rainbow soles as a present for landing a lead role. He suspects they’d have given it to him either way, though. As much as he loves the shoes, he wishes it weren’t so _loud._

There is music being played somewhere, and it’s hard to track when every step sounds like a rubber duck being squeezed. Seb can’t help but follow the song’s faint echoes. Like a dog tracking a scent. Or a pig chasing after a carrot on a stick. He’d never understood that saying. Pigs weren’t crazy about carrots. They did eat them, but they ate just about any vegetable. 

The point is, Seb is a massive snoop and he’d really like to know why someone is playing the instrumental of ‘Stick to the Status Quo’ in an empty school. Well, not completely empty. He’d forgotten his assigned novel in his locker. On his way to pick it up, he’s seen a few stragglers, and a class half-filled with students in detention. He’s passing another one right now, actually. His mind filters away the information, every extraneous detail of boredom in their faces, the displeasure in the teacher’s eyes, the tap-tap-tap of a girl’s foot as he passes by the room. 

Someone turns to give him the stink-eye. Clutching _Rebecca_ to his chest like a shield, he hurries along. 

The music is tinny, like it’s being played from a phone speaker. It’s also coming from the direction of the rehearsal room; the wide, wooden space where they’d danced in and acted in and where EJ and Ricky and Nini performed their passive-aggressive drama in. It would be funny to watch, if it weren’t for the raw anguish that Seb sees in Ricky’s eyes, sometimes, when he looks at Nini. It would be funny, if the heartbreak fractures weren’t so obvious. 

Strangely enough, no one else seems to have noticed. Natalie laughs openly at them behind closed doors. She doesn’t mean to be heartless. She just doesn’t care for interpersonal relationships. She has told Seb so, while inviting him to sit by her in class, and sharing notes, and letting him pet her hamster. Seb is starting to think she’s just really bad at communicating. 

The thing is, the tension between their leading trio are starting to run the whole cast ragged. It’s only been two weeks. The emotional strain of being in the same room as those three have led Miss Jenn to develop a stress ulcer, if sources were reliable. 

‘Sources’ being Carlos Rodriguez. 

Carlos Rodriguez. He’s in two of Seb’s classes, and prior to the musical, Seb had only been peripherally aware of him, in that reflexive way he is with boys his type: lean, warm-toned, with dark eyes that you could get lost in.

Carlos Rodriguez. Their choreographer with a smile like a shark and an ammunition of comebacks that he doles out like pie. Everyone gets a slice. Everyone gets their self-esteem shot at. Everyone gets their footwork criticised, their arm positions forcefully corrected, their postures glared at until they stood ramrod straight. Even so, Carlos is not cruel. His directions are irritating at worst, and he speaks with too much authority, but his commands are straightforward, and he never yells. Seb appreciates that. Ricky was a wooden doll in the first week, and Carlos never raised his voice, though his twitching forehead muscles belied how much he wanted to. 

Once, after a particularly memorable rehearsal where EJ received a nosebleed, courtesy of a basketball and Ricky, Carlos had pulled the boy aside, nearly incandescent with rage, and said: “I don’t know what kind of television drama you think you’re acting out, and I don’t want to know, but you’d better start behaving nice before Miss Jenn gets _another_ stress ulcer.” Though the lines of face were tight with anger, he sent Ricky off with nothing but with a heavy shoulder pat and left for a break that lasted fifteen minutes. 

Carlos Rodriguez, who holds himself at a polite distance from the rest of the cast. He is a boundless source of chatter around Miss Jenn, but he is closed off to anyone else. Seb finds this strange, for a boy so clearly excited about theatre to not interact with others who are equally excited. Seb finds a lot of things strange, like chemistry and maths and music being played in an empty school. 

He should really try to maintain a steady train of thought. To which his ADHD replies with: haha, no. 

Seb finds the source of music eventually. It’s filtering out from the rehearsal room, and so are the sounds of movement, breathing, and the quiet _whoosh_ of air being displaced. He creeps up as silently as he can, and peeks in. 

He stares. And stares.

The first thing he feels is incredulity. Because Carlos is dancing, and not in the technical, demonstrative way he does in practice; all precise angles and calculated movements. He’s given himself to the music completely. There is an exaggerated, desperate air to his motions, as if he’s dancing with a full orchestra behind him instead of a phone speaker. His presence fills the room like an open flame, and Seb is helpless to it, like a moth drawn to a light.

Carlos’s stare has gone faraway and vacant and inexplicably _soft,_ adding a tenderness to his expression that Seb has never seen before.

How had this boy flown under his radar unnoticed? How had he failed to notice the raw, unfiltered talent that coiled like a live wire under that lean frame? How had he missed this? How had anyone? 

He’d met that miles-long gaze across the room once, during rehearsal. He’d quickly averted his eyes, but he’d flicked Carlos a look, again, when Carlos wasn’t looking. He’d had raked his eyes over stretches of brown skin, long lashes, the glow of fluorescents reflected within those dark eyes.

What he’d give for that stare to be directed at him.

* * *

There is a heavy _thump,_ and Carlos almost jumps out of his skin. 

His heart drums a frantic rhythm beneath his ribs, and his head chants a mantra of _run, run, run_ as the knee-jerk flight-or-fight response settles over his shoulders like a second skin as he whirls around to find—

“Seb?” he says, confusion colouring his voice. “What are you doing here?”

Sebastian Matthew-Smith, who is crouched near the doorway and reaching for a fallen novel, freezes. He grins sheepishly up at Carlos. 

“I came back for this.” Seb scoops up his book and holds it out. Carlos squints at the looped cursive of the title. _Rebecca._

“Did you know if you play music loud enough, you can hear it all the way from the junior lockers?” Seb says, getting to his feet. “Did you also know that new Converse shoes are _really_ loud against the floors, like, what if you’re trying to sneak up on someone in the rehearsal room and it’s six PM and there’s nearly no one around? It’s so annoying.”

Carlos blinks. In his mind’s eye, he’s still dancing in a well-lit theatre on Broadway, and he scrambles to catch up. “You were trying to sneak up on me?” 

“Not on purpose,” Seb rectifies. “I was wondering why someone was still here.” He’s staring at Carlos with an unreadable expression. There’s something assessing in the way he scans Carlos from head to toe, like he’s searching. The faint glint in his eyes, quiet and gentle, feels far more kind than the looks Carlos receives from the rest of the cast. There’s an understanding way Seb has about him when he smiles at you, like he’s feeling you over for bruises or cuts, sweetly concerned and genuine.

Carlos wonders how long Seb had watched. A wave of embarrassment threatens to spill over from his stomach, but he doesn’t let it. 

“I was just going over the choreo for our biggest Act 1 number,” he says, reaching for his phone. “You don’t get as good as me without practice.” 

The music cuts off abruptly, and he’s left standing with Seb in an empty room. For some reason, this fact makes his stomach flip. 

“That didn’t look like the choreo,” Seb points out. Carlos ignores him and goes to pick up his bag. He doesn’t know what Seb might tell him, probably that it’s _too complex_ or _too advanced_ or that _he’s an arrogant nobody who clings to dance like a lifeline and he’s not that good at it, really._

Logically, he knows Seb wouldn’t say that out loud. But right now, he’s sweaty and tired and he doesn’t need any more sweet-faced white people trying to convince him they care. 

Instead, Seb says, “you were amazing!” with those glittering eyes and that wide, pink grin, and Carlos double-takes so hard he nearly cracks his neck. 

“Huh?” he croaks. 

“What are you even doing here among us plebeians?” Seb continues, rushing forward to grip his shoulders. Carlos can feel his warmth down to the bones. “Don’t you have a professional dance company to be trying out for? Why aren’t you, like, touring the country? That was so _awesome!_ ” And then he _hugs_ Carlos like it’s no big deal, and Carlos is left glaring disbelievingly at the wall over Seb’s shoulder. Humiliatingly enough, he gets the urge to melt into Seb’s embrace like a lizard on a warm rock. 

Damn. He must be more touch-starved than he thought. 

“Uh, thank you?” he tries. He accidentally inhales a lungful of Seb’s scent; the artificial tang of deodorant, and something sweeter beneath that, like cocoa, or sweat. 

Just as Carlos is starting to debate the pros and cons of burying his face into Seb’s collar—pros: Seb smells good and lizard brain is happy. Cons: he has an image to uphold, dammit—Seb pulls away. 

“Sorry, was that too much?” he says apologetically. “People tell me I get a bit, uh, touchy sometimes and if I made you uncomfortable just tell me and I’ll never do it again.”

“Lemme guess.” Carlos raises an eyebrow. “Those people were straight guys who thought getting hugged by a gay boy would awaken their latent homosexual tendencies.”

A laugh bursts out of Seb, high and bright and kind of crackly, like dented bells. It’s an alright laugh. “Most of them, yeah.”

Carlos snorts. “This school is full of idiots.” 

“The theatre kids are alright, though.” 

“Being artsy and being straight are mutually exclusive events.” 

Seb furrows his brows. “Then what’s going on between our Troy, Gabriella and Chad?”

Carlos gives him a pained smile. “I don’t know. And I don’t want to.”

The sound of rain interrupts their conversation. Carlos startles. He didn’t even realise he’d been carrying a conversation with a classmate like it was the simplest thing in the world. Wow. Go, him.

There is the murmur of thunder, and a brief flash of light, throwing the dimensions of the room in harsh contrast. 

“Shit,” Carlos mutters. Didn’t Ashlyn say it was going to storm this evening? Why didn’t he listen to her, like a normal human being, and book it home after thirty minutes of practice instead of—he checks his watch—an hour?

He rifles around in his bag for an umbrella, and God must have been in an unmerciful mood, because he finds nothing. 

“Shit,” he says again, louder. 

“Hey, don’t worry about it!” Seb has a hand stuck in his backpack, and when it emerges, he’s holding an umbrella in a lurid shade of pink. “We can share!” 

* * *

The sky is gauzy with a liminal sort of beauty, a shade darker than afternoon-blue and touch lighter than deep-evening-blue. It’s a stormy, watercolour haze, and the pigment bleeds to life in every reflective surface. It hugs the shiny chrome surfaces of the cars parked in front of the school. It paints itself on the puddles, their reflective surfaces distorting with every lash of rain. It stains the frames of Carlos’s glasses as he scans the sky, mouth twisted in consideration. 

The shadows are dark enough to make his skin glow. His eyes shine like firelight behind their frames. 

Seb keeps glancing at Carlos from the corner of his eye. He’s twitchy. Restless. There’s something inside of him that’s been knocked out of place, like a loose screw clattering around in a broken toy. He’d had a toy like that, once. A tiny plastic dog that would bark a tune every time you flipped its switch. But he had handled it too roughly, like children were wont to do, and one day, something went _crack,_ and there was a tiny _thing_ trapped and rolling around in the dog’s belly, and its barks were never the same. 

He wonders if that’s the case, now. He wonders if seeing Carlos dance like that—bold, unrestrained, like a force of nature, like live electricity—had changed some irreversible part of him. 

He wants to see it again. He wonders if Carlos would let him. 

“My bus station’s really not that far,” Carlos says, snapping Seb out of his reverie. “You don’t have to walk me there.”

As if on cue, the pitter-patter of rainfall intensifies into a torrential downpour. 

“I think I do have to walk you there.” 

“No, it’s okay.”

“You’re gonna get soaked!”

“Unless your umbrella is big enough for the two of us, we’ll end up half-soaked anyway.” 

“Hear me out.” Seb lifts an arm. “We’ll huddle.”

Judging by the look on Carlos’s face, Seb might as well have told him that Ryan was heterosexual. He wonders if he should feel offended. They’d hugged earlier. Carlos seemed fine with it, didn’t he?

“If you’re uncomfortable,” he starts saying, but Carlos doesn’t let him finish. 

With decisive motions, he grabs Seb’s arm and tucks himself under it. He fixes Seb with a stare, chin lifted, as if saying, _what are you gonna do about it?_

“I am perfectly comfortable.” His tone offers no room for argument.

Seb feels jittery, all of a sudden. He feels like he’s about to shiver out of his skin if he doesn’t _do something_ and he has no idea what he’s meant to do. Carlos is a warm counterpoint to the cool evening air and the wind that’s throwing tree branches about, and _wow_ that’s gonna be a nightmare when they finally step outside. 

They’re really close. They’re really, really close, and when Carlos gives him a questioning glance, like _what are you doing hurry up and open the umbrella,_ all Seb can think about is the fact that he can’t find the edges of Carlos’s pupil in his iris, they’re all dark, dark, dark, like the fathomless depths of a tunnel you can’t help but venture into, tugged along by curiosity and the burning need for _knowledge,_ dark like two twin galaxies, the blueness of the sky glowing in them like how Seb would imagine oceans on Europa to be, and he wonders what he’ll find if he dives deeper. He wants to lose himself in that darkness. He wants to—

Thunder rumbles faintly; like a premonition, or blatant foreshadowing. 

“You’re really warm,” Seb blurts out, and immediately wants to die. 

Luckily, Carlos doesn’t interpret it as being horrifyingly creepy. He just seems amused. “Thanks. You too.” A corner of his mouth curls up. There’s a bit of skin peeling off his lower lip. 

“I guess I should—” Seb holds out his umbrella, then realises he can’t open it without his other hand, which is looped around Carlos. “—open this,” he finishes lamely. 

Carlos snickers quietly. “We’re idiots.”

Seb sighs. “You can say that again.”

“Here, let me.” Carlos reaches over with his free arm—the one that isn’t on Seb’s shoulder—and with a bit of fiddling, the umbrella springs open. 

Seb holds it above their heads, casting a sharp pink glow over them both. “Nice job.”

“I know.”

They stare out at the deluge, which seems to show no sign of stopping. Seb keeps thinking one of them is going to take a step, but as the seconds drag on, neither of them move. The longer he stands there, pressed up against Carlos’s warm torso, the less the howling wind is eerie, and the more it feels tense—not in a bad way, not like uncomfortable silences in conversations, but something more like anticipation, something that crackles beneath his skin, something that makes him thankful for the umbrella’s pink shadow, because it hides the heat rising to his cheeks. 

Seb can hardly hear over the deafening pound of his heartbeat. 

He knows what this is. He’s felt it before, two times, once before he knew what the word ‘gay’ meant and all the baggage it carried, and once after an ill-advised romp in the fields with a neighbouring farmhand. He’s felt it ever since he caught sight of Carlos walking through the school hallways, shoulders back and chin lifted, Carlos saying “I think he’d rather play Sharpay”, and the way he’d smiled at Seb, silent understanding passing between them. He felt it when he saw Carlos in that rehearsal room, dancing with his soul in his steps. He’s carried it around like a seed in his chest, and now, it’s beginning to bloom. 

Carlos looks him in the eye and smiles. “Ready?”

Thunder cracks like a whip, and a bolt of lightning nearly splits the sky in half. 

_I like you,_ Seb imagines saying. _I think I’ve liked you ever since I met you._

Instead, he forces down the devastating swell of emotion, and smiles back. 

“Ready.”

* * *

See, here’s the thing. 

Carlos doesn’t make a habit of putting his arm around cute boys and then running with them through pouring rain. He doesn’t make a habit of hanging around cute boys, full stop. He never goes out of his way to act buddy-buddy in front of people who don’t want him around. Why should he spend time reaching out to others if they don’t reach back? Why should he even reach out, at all, if everyone has already found their groups? Why force himself into spaces that don’t open their arms to him?

Yet, here he is, tucked in a space that literally opened their arms to him. 

Seb’s hand is gripping Carlos’s shoulder tightly, and it tenses whenever they veer near a puddle. His heat clings to every crevice where he’s touching Carlos, because apparently, he runs like a goddamn _furnace._ If Carlos breathes in deep enough, he can smell Seb, faint and sweet, underneath the heady scent of petrichor. It’s not unpleasant. Far from it, actually.

How did his life come to this?

The sun has set by now, twilight edging its way into night, made darker by the rainclouds. The roads have turned into slush and dirt. Red taillights of passing cars paint strips of crimson along the wet tarmac, and Carlos may have found the sight beautiful if he wasn’t stuck in the middle of a storm with his bus stop a block away. His other shoulder, the one that’s not completely covered by the umbrella, is soaked through. He suspects it’s the same for Seb. 

They’re stumbling along the sidewalk like a four-legged toddler taking its first steps. The wind has settled, thankfully, but the rain has not. 

Seb shrieks when a car drives by and the resulting splash nearly drenches them. Luckily, the umbrella protects them from the worst of it. Unluckily, their shoes are now soaked. 

“My shoes are ruined!” wails Seb. Carlos has to strain to hear him over the deluge. 

“You’ll live,” he says. His socks are wet, and every step is accompanied with an audible _squelch._

_“What did you say?”_

“I _said,_ ” shouts Carlos. “You’ll live!"

“These were a present from my sisters!” 

_Why are you telling me this,_ Carlos thinks hysterically. “Good to know!” 

“They’re gay!”

Carlos squints in Seb’s direction. Water droplets are clinging to his glasses, and there’s a big one on the corner of his right frame. Seb’s face is distorted by it. _“What?”_

“My shoes!” Seb says cheerfully and sticks out a foot. “Look! They’re gay!” 

Carlos looks at the black Converse, which is thoroughly drenched with dirty water. “No?”

“The sole! Look at the sole!” Seb hops around on one foot, nearly managing to brain himself on the sidewalk. Carlos hunches down a little, sparing a thought for the ridiculousness of the situation, and looks. 

“Rainbow soles.” He doesn’t know whether to laugh or to gape. “You have rainbow _soles?"_

“Yep!” Seb grins at him. Carlos doesn’t know how he’s _still_ smiling despite the general gloom of the situation. And the weather. Mostly the weather. 

“Where did your sisters get these?” he asks, righting himself. 

“I don’t know!” 

Carlos laughs disbelievingly. “What?”

“It’s custom-made!” Seb shrugs, or as best he can with his arm draped around Carlos. If possible, the rain gets _harder,_ and he raises his voice to be heard. “I think they got it online!”

A lock of wet hair is sticking up at a funny angle, and Carlos is struck with the sudden urge to flatten it down. Maybe it’s the rainwater leaking into his brain, maybe it’s the chemical fumes of passing cars, or maybe it’s the way he’s pressed up against Seb so completely, their proximity dizzying. Whatever the reason, he reaches out and brushes a hand through Seb’s hair. 

Seb stares at him with a bewildered expression. His eyes are a dark teal, a few shades off from the sky. Carlos has never noticed that before. He’s also never noticed the curve of Seb’s cheeks, or the dip of his cupid’s bow, or the way his lips part, ever-so-slightly, when he looks at Carlos. 

“Did I have a leaf in my hair?” Seb asks.

“Yeah,” says Carlos. His throat feels very, very dry. “Yeah, you did.”

Another crack of thunder rolls, and the two of them hurry along. 

The bus stop comes into sight, eventually. By then, they’re both half-wet and shivering, despite having their arms around each other. They collapse onto the bench, breathing twin sighs of relief. Carlos doesn’t really want to let go, but he figures he should, for the sake of politeness. This was probably a one-off thing, after all. God, after a single little hug and a walk through the rain, he realises he’s suddenly and hopelessly endeared with a boy that, yesterday, he’d known nothing about.

His life is either a joke or a gay romcom. He’s really hoping it’s the latter.

“Remind me to never do that again,” Carlos groans, untangling his arm from Seb’s. He twists from side to side, rolls his shoulders and cracks his back. 

Seb makes a weird nose, like a bitten-off choke. Carlos blinks at him in concern; he looks flustered.

“Are you okay?” Carlos asks. 

“Peachy,” Seb affirms, closing the umbrella. And then sneezes. 

“Please don’t tell me you have a cold,” Carlos says, his voice deadly still. 

“Oh, I’m fine—” 

“Shut up,” Carlos interrupts. He shifts closer to Seb, worming an arm around the other boy’s waist. “Just shut up.”

He doesn’t know what he’s doing. Someone please help him. 

“Okay,” says Seb, sounding surprised. Gingerly, he puts an arm around Carlos, as if they hadn’t been glued at the hip two minutes prior. “Um, thank you for your concern?”

“I can’t have our only pianist getting sick,” replies Carlos, and regrets his life. 

Seb laughs instead. It’s a nice laugh. When did it become nice?

“Is that all I’m good for?” he asks. His breath is warm against Carlos’s ear. 

The rain has subsided, somewhat. Instead of torrents, it’s showering steadily, a soft drumming against the roof of the bus stop. It’s dark, and the only sources of light are from the streetlamps and passing cars. The air smells like ozone and wet brick and beneath that, something subtler, sweeter. 

It’s so dark that Seb’s face is cast in shadow. Something about the darkness makes Carlos’s heart crawl up his throat, as if attempting to breach the short distance between their faces.

“Of course not,” Carlos says. “You’re worth so much more.”

Seb has a nice smile and a nicer laugh. Seb plays the piano like a professional and wears rainbow-soled Converse and offers up his embrace and his umbrella and his easy companionship, freely, like he expects nothing in return. He’s vibrant, just like his stupid pink umbrella, and he’s unapologetically _himself._

“Really?” Seb’s voice is laced with some indecipherable emotion. “Could you tell me about it?”

The orange glow of the streetlamp seems impossibly far away, something that exists outside of this little bubble of reality, outside of the metal bench they sit on, wrapped up in each other. _Moments like these don’t come around often_ , he considers, tracing the lines of Seb’s face with his eyes. They never do, for Carlos.

“You’re probably the most bizarre person I’ve ever met,” he begins, and Seb laughs. The sound emboldens him. He still doesn’t know what he’s doing, but at least he’ll be doing it confidently. 

“You watched me dance, in secret, right after you walked through an empty school trying to find out who was playing music,” continues Carlos. “You know how weird that is, right?”

Seb looks unsure. “Yeah—” 

Carlos doesn’t let him finish. 

“And then after talking with me for two minutes, which is two minutes more than any other conversation we’ve had, which is none, you offer to share your umbrella with me? And walk me to the bus stop? Who _does_ that?”

“Someone with common decency?”

“Exactly!” Carlos throws up his arm, the one that isn’t wrapped around Seb. “You hardly know me, and you offered to cuddle under an umbrella like it’s no big deal, and you ran through a _flood_ with me and ruined the shoes your sisters got you—”

“In my defence, my family raised me with morals—”

“Shut up, I’m still talking.” He can smell the rain drying in Seb’s hair and feel the warmth of his breaths. He can see the curve of Seb’s mouth, soft and amber-lit. 

“You’re kind,” Carlos says slowly. The darkness makes him honest. It’s dangerous. “I’ve seen you around the other cast members. You’re always so _nice,_ even when they’re being assholes to each other, or to you. Natalie loves you and she doesn’t love anything besides her hamster. You’re always on the piano. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you take a break, except for when you’re onstage.”

“Piano _is_ a break for me.” Seb’s smile goes soft in the middle, and exasperated too, two different kinds of fondness stacked up on each other. It’s a smile he’s never worn around others, and the knowledge that _Carlos_ put that there, that _Carlos_ is the source of it makes his chest feel light and airy. “Didn’t you say I was awesome for other reasons?” 

“I’m not done yet,” Carlos says, his heart in his throat.

“Then hurry _up_ ,” Seb laughs, pressing his forehead to Carlos’s, and the last of his doubts melt away. 

There’s something intimate about the sound of a rainstorm and the way it shrouds them like a curtain, sealing them away from sight. Carlos is glad for that, because they’re still living in Salt Lake City, Utah, though he highly doubts anybody unsavoury would be wandering around in this weather. 

He doesn’t make a habit of cuddling with cute boys at bus stops. He doesn’t make a habit of breathing confessions to them, softly, under the cover of night and rainfall. He has no idea what he’s doing, but somehow, he knows it’ll be alright.

“Actions speak louder than words,” he says quietly. “Have you ever heard of that?”

Seb tilts his head, considering, an expectant glint in his eye. “I think I’ll need a recap.”

Carlos lets his hand trace all the way up to the front of Seb’s shirt, over his collar, to the warm, damp skin of his throat. He can feel Seb’s pulse under his fingers, thudding at a brisk allegro pace.

“Can I kiss you?” he whispers.

Seb—his gaze searing in its intensity, his heartbeat hammering faster and faster—nods. 

Carlos doesn’t have any kissing experience, a fact that he has never felt so acutely before now. He leans in closer, and panics at the last second at the prospect of putting his mouth on Seb’s, but Seb moves, helping Carlos just like he helps with all things, and closes the scant distance between them. 

It’s gentle. It’s soft, softer than Carlos had expected, and when Seb tilts his head, and their lips move together, it’s searing, and something vital inside of him detaches and spills white-hot feeling everywhere. His rushing blood matches the pouring rain and nothing else has any sound. His mouth is sticky with spit that isn’t his, and he can taste Seb’s breath on his tongue, sweet like over-sugared cocoa.

Carlos wonders how many infinities can be counted within the space of this moment, because it feels like forever before they pull apart. When they do, it’s slow, reluctant, neither of them willing to break the tranquil spell that’s settled over them. 

“I like you,” Seb says, quiet and earnest in the dark. “I like you a lot.”

Carlos, whose brain feels like cotton candy, blurts out “that’s gay,” like a _moron_ and for some reason this causes Seb to explode into uncontrollable guffaws. A smile tugs at Carlos’s mouth too, because Seb’s laugh is never not infectious, but it’s drowned out by his _sheer fucking incompetence._

“Oh my god.” He pushes his face against Seb’s shoulder, which is shaking from the force of his laughter. “End me now. Just end me.”

“We were— having— a moment—” Seb chokes out, breathless. “Then you just—” He collapses into giggles, and Carlos kind of wants to punch him but also kind of wants to kiss him. It’s a weird combination. 

“I’ve… I’ve never kissed anyone,” he says instead, idly brushing his thumb over Seb’s jawline. “I haven’t had a boyfriend before, either.”

Seb sobers up quickly _._ “ _Dude_ ,” he breathes, wide-eyed. “Never?”

“Bro,” Carlos deadpans. “Never.”

“But you’re so—” he pauses. “You’re, like, so confident.”

Carlos nearly laughs. “Am I, though?” 

Seb nods. His face is wide open in the dim light, and Carlos realises he’s not lying, that he’s never been very good at that at all. 

“You’re patient, too,” Seb says with sureness. “You’re bossy sometimes, and kind of a know-it-all, but we all know you just want the show to succeed. You never yell at us. You’re the best choreographer a production could ask for, and we totally don’t deserve you.”

Carlos can feel his face morphing into something stupid and sappy. “Where did that come from?”

“You were talking about all the reasons I was worth something.” Seb stares at him with such conviction that it sends his heart skipping, careening, beating a wild rhythm beneath his breastbone. “I figured I’d return the favour.”

Carlos’s breath hitches. “I think I’d prefer it if you showed me.”

Seb smiles; a small, private thing. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

* * *

The bus rumbles to a stop, doors swinging open and spilling its cold fluorescent glare onto the pavement. Carlos takes two steps toward it. He pauses. Turns around. 

“How’re you gonna get home?” His brow is furrowed with concern and his hair is shot through with silver where the light hits the damp parts. 

“I’ll just call my—” Seb begins, before he realises. “Oh.”

“What?”

“The farm has really bad reception,” he says, glancing at the sky in worry. It’s inky black, rain still showering down. “Usually I’d take the other bus and make the trek myself, but…” 

“And you didn’t think of that _before_?”

“I didn’t know the sun would set that fast!” 

Carlos rolls his eyes, but there’s no heat to the motion, only fondness. “Just stay the night at my place.”

Seb feels like he’s been slapped with a wet glove. “Huh?”

“You can send an email to them or something. Let them know you’re fine. There is no way I’m letting you walk home in this weather.” Carlos holds out a hand to him, his eyes pleading. “Please?”

How can he possibly say no?

“Hurry it up, boys!” the bus driver barks out, and they scramble to board. 

They sit in the back row, holding hands the entire trip. The rain is a comforting drum against the bus windows, and Seb follows the trails they make as they slide down. Beyond the glass, the world is hazy and made of shadowy outlines and glaring headlights. The moon is a vague impression against the clouds. Carlos leans his head onto Seb’s shoulder, and he can feel something growing between the gaps of his ribcage, blooming slowly and surely. He doesn’t know what’ll happen after this. He doesn’t know what these feelings will translate to in the light of day, what they will become underneath the clarity of sunlight. He doesn’t want this to end. 

“Do you wanna do this again sometime?” he asks. Carlos raises his head. Blinks at him. 

“Running around in the rain?” His voice is incredulous, and he stares at Seb like he’s lost his mind. He supposes he has. 

“I meant doing something else. Just the two of us.” 

Carlos has a confused expression on his face. “I thought that was a given?”

“Huh?”

He raises an eyebrow. “We gave each other compliments and then kissed with the rain as a backing track. It doesn’t get more romantic than that.”

Seb scrambles to clarify. “Oh, I didn’t know if you just wanted to kiss me, or go out with me, or—”

“There’s a difference?”

“Yeah.”

Carlos falls silent. There’s a steely look in his eyes, and when he stares at Seb, its intensity presses down on his chest, making his breath stutter. 

“Sebastian Matthew-Smith,” Carlos begins, holding both of Seb’s hands in his. “Prior to this day, we hardly knew each other. But now… we still don’t know much about each other.” He takes a deep breath. “I’d like to know you better. I’d like to go on dates with you. I’d like to spend more time with you.” He pauses. “Just not in a rainstorm.”

Seb feels impossibly light, like he’d float away if untethered, so he grips Carlos’s hand tightly, stays rooted to the earth, and answers, “I’d like that too. Also not in a rainstorm.”

Carlos is grinning so brightly it’s a miracle he doesn’t start glowing right then and there. “We’re having a sleepover,” he points out, giddy. “I think that’s enough time to recount all our hopes and dreams and childhood traumas, right?”

“Oh, definitely,” Seb agrees, also smiling like an idiot.

He lets his gaze drift, glancing over the rows of empty seats and the bus driver with his back turned to them. He looks over at Carlos, who seems to be thinking of the same thing. Their stares meet for one, tense moment, before Carlos is tipping his chin up, a silent demand in his eyes. 

When Seb leans in, Carlos meets him halfway.

And that, in the end, is how it really began.


End file.
